Laurie Conrad is a divine healer who works with the Distant Healing Network, a group of healers from around the world who send healing to anyone who requests it.

September 12, 2001 Ithaca, New York

Q: This is an excerpt from your book, The Spiritual Life of Animals and Plants: "When I was a child, for years I sat and waited in fields and meadows hoping to hear the flowers sing - and they never did."

L: It’s wasn’t just when I was a child ... as an adult as well I used to take the car and go out to a field or a meadow and sit there waiting for the flowers to sing - sometimes during the day, sometimes at night. And then one day I was at home, I was sitting on the porch, the front porch - it was early evening - and I heard the flowers sing in the garden - pansies - pansies that I had bought and planted in the garden. And when I heard them sing, it was not with the physical ears. And I realized I had gone about this entirely incorrectly. It was a mystical experience to hear the flowers sing, because they were singing in another realm you might almost say. It was more clairvoyant hearing, clairaudient, and it was more a vibration of their being, in a certain way, making song. And I think Mary in Medjugorje, Our Lady the Madonna, told the visionaries there that when we pray, we give off beautiful lights - different colored lights - and She said that we are like beautiful flowers when we pray. And I imagine we also give off "songs" too - though She didn’t mention that. But I think the flowers, when I heard them sing - it was just the vibration of their very being, like the birds singing, or the musicians, when we make music; it’s an expression of the soul. But I think when we just walk around on the street, we’re also "singing" if we’re free, if we’re standing in a free place, just vibrating. Some of the songs are happy and some of them are sad, some of them are light like the birds in the woods, just freely singing because it’s a part of their nature. This is a little more on the mystical side, but it’s essentially the same - it’s an expression of the soul.

Q: And when you heard them sing, was it like a solo or was it like a choir?

L: It was a choir. And it was like the birds on Quarry Bridge, on that day that I wrote about in the book - when I was standing on the bridge and all the birds were singing all those wonderful sounds and rhythms and pitches intermingling one on top of the other. And I imagine that’s how it sometimes is when the angels sing. That it’s sometimes the sound of their being, their souls vibrating and radiating pitches, forming layers of sound.

Q: And have you ever heard any other flowers sing beside pansies?

L: Those are the only flowers I’ve heard and it was totally by accident. Maybe once was enough. I no longer wish it, I can still remember it, almost picture it.

Q: Pansies look like they could sing ... those little faces ...

L: It was very, very delicate, very, very gentle; like very little quiet, transparent wind chimes in the wind - very delicate - and I was so grateful, I did thank them. One shouldn’t have to search indefinitely for something that we want that much - I wanted so to hear them sing.

Q: They finally decided to ...

L: They sang. I imagine they always sing, we just don’t perceive it.

Q: In your book you mention that you’re clairvoyant, that you have had the sixth sense since you were a child. When did you know you were clairvoyant?

L: Actually, I didn’t know that I was clairvoyant until about age 30, but most likely I have been clairvoyant since birth. The first time I remember seeing angels and bright beings, I think I was about seven years old. But I suspect that it was happening way before that. Occasionally I am clairaudient as well - that means that you can hear sounds from other realms.

Q: And what’s it like to live with another sense, your clairvoyance?

L: Well, it’s interesting, because you could say that you are living in two or more realms at once. There’s this reality, the reality that we have around us, this conventional "material" reality - and then there is ultimate reality. If you are a true clairvoyant you can see into this other reality. Clairvoyance, at its highest, means "clear-seeing". In this sense it is the ability to see into the ultimate reality, the ability to perceive the Divine Light that is the substratum of this conventional reality. But that took a long time, I don’t think I was born with that ability, to see the Divine Light - you have to develop your clairvoyance, just like everything else in life. So maybe I saw bright beings when I was little, but that didn’t automatically mean that I could see the Divine everywhere. They say that the "Divine is everywhere" and, well, the Divine IS everywhere. To say it another way: the substratum of this conventional, so-called "material" universe is Divine Light. If you get the clairvoyance to a certain level you can actually see the Divine Light through the forms. At times I have perceived the material forms of our world floating on this Divine Light.

There’s also a clairvoyance where you see into other realms, where other realities and beings are. You can see beings that once lived on earth, for instance, saints that are coming from another realm, beings from other realms. You can also see other realms.

There are so many different kinds of clairvoyance ...

Another sort of clairvoyance is like a little movie that plays in my head and shows me what people are doing in other places on earth - and sometimes I will use this when I am Healing someone. I’m not allowed to use it as a "psychic" kind of activity or as a "game" so to speak. But if I’m using it for healing, if I want to see who I am healing or if an animal is lost and I’m trying to find out where that animal is - it’s perhaps best described as a sort of little movie in my mind that starts playing if I ask it to, and sometimes even if I don’t ask. And I can see scenes, I can actually describe the room to you, I can describe where that little animal is and what he looks like.

More likely, I will just pray, I won’t summon up the clairvoyance. If it will help the situation, I can summon it up, I am allowed to do that.

Getting back to your original question: Living in two realms at once or more than two realms at once can get a little complicated, especially at first - but I think if you are given clairvoyance or second sight as it is sometimes called, you are also given the ability to comfortably live it. So sometimes I feel as though I have one foot in one realm and the other foot in another realm and then all of me is also in an incredible, Divine energy. Probably the most difficult thing about clairvoyance is trying to explain it to others. We don’t have the words for it, a vocabulary for it, because most people are not clairvoyant. It would have been much easier for me if I had been taught what I needed to know about clairvoyance when I was in kindergarten or the first grade, but unfortunately I had to wait until I was in my 30's to even know that I was a clairvoyant, or even what the word meant. I still don’t really know what it means, this clairvoyance.

Q: And how do you experience living beings through your clairvoyance?

A: Well, as I say, we don’t really have words for this. It’s easier to experience it than to describe it. I think one way to answer your question would be to say we clairvoyants perceive what people call "auras" - different coloured lights, let’s say, that emanate from living beings, whether it be a plant, or an animal or a human. These colours will change; some will change quite quickly with the person’s, the being’s mood or thoughts. They can also change depending on the health of the person - and other factors that I would rather not talk about in this interview.

So, in other words, if a person is angry, the colours around him will reflect that emotion, and the clairvoyant will see these colours changing around the angry person. If the person is then sad, the colours will change, even if he has only a sad thought the colours might change. It is the same for any emotion or thought - or illness or injury ... There are many different layers to clairvoyance. And I can only speak for myself because you could have a group of ten clairvoyants in the same room, all looking at the same person - and depending on their perceptive ability and what level they, themselves, have achieved spiritually - they all might see entirely different things. One person will say you have a pink aura, another person will say no, it’s brown, and it depends if they’re seeing actually into the soul or if they’re just seeing into the emotions and thoughts and/or health factors. The psychics tend to see the emotions, let’s say; the more enlightened clairvoyants can actually look into the soul. So it’s very complicated. Do I understand all this? No, I only see what I see.

Q: In the book, you say that you teach animals to pray. How can you tell if an animal is praying or not?

L: When I say that an animal is praying - let’s say I ask an animal to pray, suggest ways of praying, and call on St. Francis or St. Martin or Christ. Higher beings come, and the animal is responding to these Divine beings, in ways mentioned in the book. And then I see that same animal the next day - how do I know if it is praying or not? I can tell mainly by its "aura", the energetic field around it made of light. What colour is the light today? Is it clearer light, is it more powerful, is it now radiating outwards from the animal, is it radiating more powerfully than before? And so on. I can tell in other ways as well, but I think I have said enough for our purpose here.

This is MY experience of it. Another clairvoyant might perceive something entirely different. But all clairvoyants would agree that either the aura had changed or that it was the same size and colour as it was the day before. A lot of it is just hit and miss. When you start interpreting what you are clairvoyantly seeing, they don’t give you a handbook ... We clairvoyants must find our own way empirically, experientially. In other words, because I asked a hundred people what they were feeling or thinking when I saw a blue/green aura around them, and the answer was always the same - I now know that when I see a person with that particular blue/green aura, I can be fairly certain that they are feeling or thinking along those same lines. You don’t get a code book. Just because you are clairvoyant or psychic doesn’t mean you understand what you are seeing. You have to learn, you have to work at it.

Q: And these perceptions also apply to animals?

L: To animals, to plants and to people - and the interpretation of the colours will be the same, in my experience. If you have an unhappy animal or plant - I know this sounds strange to the average person - but animals and plants experience emotions, not just humans. And the colours in their auras will have the same meaning, whether a plant, an animal or a human.

One of my favorite stories happened when I was in my twenties. I was staying with a friend and my friend said, "Let’s paint my mother’s bedroom light blue." I said, "Fine." We began painting the room a beautiful light blue color. Eventually I worked my way to one corner of the room and one of the plants in the window seat nearby - let’s call it an aura - its energetic field was a horrible brown. And in my experience, when people had this ugly colour brown it meant that they were angry - a sullen sort of anger. So the mother came home that night, we had finished painting the room, and I said, "This is going to sound strange to you, Alice, but I think that one big plant in the window seat was angry when I was painting - maybe it didn’t like the fumes." She looked at me, and without any hesitation said: "Well, I wouldn’t be surprised, that plant belonged to my ex-husband. And he had a terrible temper."

Do certain colours mean the same to all clairvoyants? I would say yes. There are meanings for certain colors that we probably all would agree with, all clairvoyants. But the shades of colour and what colour are perceived would I think depend, as I said, on what level of consciousness and spiritual ability the individual clairvoyant had attained.

I was taught that if you allow the psychic abilities, or pursue them - which can be tempting - you are not going to get to a true clairvoyance. You have to deny the psychic tendencies so that you can bring the clairvoyance up to a higher level. St. Teresa of Avila is very emphatic about this. When she had visions, she would categorically deny, refuse the experiences. If it were a true experience, she said that she would know it later on, it "stayed with her" in a special way that she had learned to trust. But if you willingly pursue these side roads of spirituality, well - you might just end up on a side road.

Q: That if you wait for it to come to you, it’s better than to try and precipitate it yourself?

L: That you just deny the experience, just go on with your life and know that what is most important is God and the soul. Not the experiences, the colors you see, not the little movies in your mind - even if they’re absolutely correct and true, time after time. That’s almost a parlor game, compared to true spirituality.

For Healing purposes this sort of clairvoyance can be very useful. Even so - the Healer doesn’t really need to access it. You can just say "Please God, help whoever needs help." You don’t need to see the being that needs healing. You don’t even need to know their name.

Q: So it sounds as if there’s a fine line between what you consider to be psychic and what you consider to be clairvoyant?

L: It’s not a fine line at all. It is more like developing a taste for fine wine instead of cheap wine. I’d say it was a pretty large line of demarcation. If you stay in the psychic realms, you will never get to ultimate reality - because you are still involved with forms. Forms in other realms perhaps - but still forms.

Q: It’s just another illusion, in a way.

L: Not necessarily illusion - although you might be perceiving your own imagination instead of other realms. Not an illusion, but it is just another reality with forms. And the Divine is really formless. Let’s put it another way: Let’s say I have conquered my reactions here on Earth, my reactions in this reality, okay? But, if I am still reacting to clairvoyant visions of people in other realms, getting angry with them or getting upset with them or getting fearful or involved with them in some way ... then I have not truly conquered my lower nature. I am still not thinking about God. I am not remembering that I am the Soul. So clairvoyance can actually pull you OFF the spiritual path. There are more traps for the clairvoyant, if you look at it in a certain way. Because it’s more mysterious, "other worldly", we assume that it is more spiritual. Well, for example: in my youth, I assumed that anything I saw in another realm was so much better than anything here, in this so-called physical reality. Well, NO, that’s not true. Those realms are just other realms. They could be higher or lower, they could be worse than this realm. But the point is, they are still not ultimate reality. If you get caught up in those forms, now you’re caught up in THOSE forms.

Q: So, we should avoid becoming "romantic" in our perceptions of such things?

L: Yes. Just because it is a vision or some sort of psychic or clairvoyant happening does not mean that it is a high, mystical experience. A high mystical experience is a tremendous gift. In the Catholic Church - and that’s the only church I’ve carefully studied in this area - if you want to be a saint, being clairvoyant, having visions, even seeing Christ every day in your living room - is not enough. If you do not have the virtue to back that up, if you haven’t gotten yourself and your relationship with God purified to its highest perfection - well the Church doesn’t care WHO you’ve seen and talked with every day. And I think that is a very sane, balanced view.

Again, from a certain point of view, you could say that clairvoyants have more temptations.

Q: Here in this realm ...?

L: Well, in all realms. Because there is also the ego trap: "Oh, look, I can see into other realms", or "Look, I can see into the future" or "Wow, I can bilocate" - you know. So, I would say "So? You can see into other realms. Now what?" For instance, as a musician, I am so grateful that I have music in my life because it is such beauty. Well, you could say that it is the reflection of the Divine in manifestation. But maybe because of that sensitivity, the musician’s sensitivity, I also needed the clairvoyance so that I could see the angels, the Divine beings. Maybe I had more needs than other people, a bigger lack - in a way - here on earth. I have great admiration for people who don’t have music in their lives and who don’t see angels - and they are still wonderful, kind, beautiful people. Well, they’re far ahead of me.